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Using DTrace to Profile JDBC-Related Calls in GlassFish

How can a large project like GlassFish make such brisk strides on performance (1, 2, 3)? Well, for one thing, it certainly doesn't hurt to have backing from a company that has created tools like DTrace.

In his latest
blog entry, Paul shows how he used DTrace to identify hot spots in the PostgreSQL JDBC Driver when run on GlassFish. Of course, the same techniques could be applied to any area of GlassFish. So please, feel free to jump in and help with our endless push for top performance.

"To a guy with a hammer, everything looks like a nail"
DTrace is a great instrumentation/probe technology but contextual analysis important in enterprise performance management is NOT its strength.
I did post a longer reply on Pauls blog but he apparently is not open up to the possibility that he is taking a step backwards in time just so that he can use a hammer - he did not accept the posting.
I really do not see the point in attempting to profile a JDBC layer without recording the transaction history patterns (xa-start,....xa-end,commit) and SQL commands.
I think most performance engineers have realized that its not just the code but the commands issued to external processes that is off interest in the construction of a performance model of an application, application server and resource driver.
regards,
William